Being a big fan of Koyannisqatsi and Philip Glass in general, i was looking forward to this quite a bit. It's unfortunate that this film turned out to be as cliched and flat as the first film was pioneering and bold. Some of the music, especially the first and last pieces, is stunning, and sounds amazing in Dolby Digital. Reggio's images, with some notable exceptions, such as some famous works of art morphing into one another (with a technique far more interesting than the typical morphing), are nothing new, and the usual topics of the hazards of technology and corporate greed feel all too well-worn. Whereas the first film may have inspired a style of tv commercials, Naqoyqatsi just feels like one.

first off i consider koya one of my top movies and think highly of powa as well. this is not either of those movies. it has been made in a different time .

because my expectations were so entrenched i had to stop this movie halfway thru thinking it was crap and take a break.

then i came back to it and really enjoyed the last half. not to say this movie is as well crafted as koyaniqaatsi because it isn't.

but it is very different, the linear sense of koya is gone replaced with chaotic and seemingly unrelated images thrown together into a relentless barrage. At first i struggled to find the underlying theme/string that connected it all as such was in koyanisqaatsi but there was none and i became disappointed. but perhaps the movie is more reflective of the chaotic barrage of information we live in. the unending information and violence overload.

in koyanisqatsi i felt hope perhaps in this nothing but the maddening roar of modern day society tearing itself apart.

its been twenty odd years since koyanisqaatsi and everything portrayed in that movie has only become more intense, more fractured. perhaps this movie lacks the simple sublimeness of the first because reggio not longer sees the world as such. the madness of modern man is much more evident in this. the oversaturation in the movie reflecting the over saturation the skewed perspective our world has.

this movie is certainly not as easy to digest as reggio's other works and i would like to return to it as some point. To those who enjoyed the first two i would say watch this but leave your preconceived notions and expectations behind.

So some of it's definitely disappointing. I watched the first two Qatsi films back in 2013, and despite liking both a lot, seeing that Naqoyqatsi was less well-received made me apprehensive about watching it.

Finally watching it now, some eight to nine years later, some of that apprehension was reasonable, but some not so much.

The digital effects sometimes work and sometimes don't. To have computer-generated images of falling coins pop up multiple times in a montage that also shows stock market traders yelling, people gambling, and wealthy celebrities is pointless. You're already getting your point across just fine!

The computer-generated images are inconsistent, too, as are the filters used. Sometimes it's striking, like some night-vision type footage of warfare scenes. Sometimes, it looks pretty bad (there's a great time lapse shot of the White House that's preceded by an awful looking CGI-ish shot of the Hollywood sign, for example).

But y'know what? For all its flaws, it does do a decent job at capturing what the first decade of the 21st century sort of felt like. It's the only Qatsi film made during my lifetime, so that's something I could appreciate more so here than with the other ones. And the other thing done well here is the score: even if Godfrey Reggio might occasionally let you down with the visuals, Philip Glass brings his A-game when it comes to the music.

Things have changed so much since 2002 that I'd honestly like to see another film in this series that tries to capture either the 2010s or (god forbid) the mess that has so far been the 2020s. Even though both Reggio and Glass are still alive, I'm not holding my breath that they'll collaborate again to put out something similar, but you never know...

(EDIT: Looks like they did do another documentary called Visitors in 2013, so might have to check that out)